Even given a multiverse of infinite worlds I still struggle to comprehend a possible one in which I could give less of a shit about your kids.

Don’t get me wrong, I wish no harm upon your – or indeed anyone else’s – children. It’s just that given the choice I’d rather you didn’t tell me about them in unrelenting, tedious detail.

I know single parent dating is hard, but this rule applies most emphatically, to those guys that I fuck.

Why? Well, kids just aren’t sexy. Your ability to raise offspring, while no doubt held in great regard by some women, has no bearing whatsoever on my own affections towards you.

Talk about them if you like – I’m aware that in the cacophonous mêlée of your life you may well need to vent about certain things. Feel free to mention them, tell me how precocious and cute they are, or regale me with an amusing anecdote involving the time one of them said something so adorable it made everyone at that family wedding spew Cava through their nose in a spontaneous gesture of delighted amusement: just don’t bang on and on about them as if they’re the only interesting thing about you.

I highly doubt I’ll ever have kids, and if I do I’m sure the world will not be big enough to contain the gigantic flying fuck that I’m willing to give about them. My kids will be as special to me as yours, no doubt, are to you. But right now, please don’t expect me to care.

Further, please understand that too much child-based conversation could seriously hinder my ability to find you attractive. Yes, you are virile and strong and manly: your sperm has been biologically successful on at least one occasion. But that does not impress me. If you can shoot it over your shoulder I’ll be impressed. Hit a bullseye at 20 paces and I’ll fawn in gushing admiration. Dribble it into a woman? Not so much.

Your reminder that sex produces small, vomiting, expensive packets of noise actually has a similar effect on me to the effect that it might have on you if I were to mention castration: it kills the mood. It reminds me that there are horrible, awful, cunt-ripping things that can happen to me as a result of our sweaty, joyful union. And those are things that, believe it or not, make me dry up faster than you can say “episiotomy“.

Again, I will restate for the people who will have skimmed over my original disclaimer: I wish no harm upon your kids. I’m not anti-child. I appreciate that in order for our race to exist beyond the next generation we do need some of these creatures.

So I don’t hate kids. Parents I know assure me patronizingly that I’ll definitely want one some day, and at that moment I’ll understand the soaring joy of having them. I will one day realise that it’s all worthwhile – giving up my social life, burying myself in shit and vomit, spending all my cash on ridiculous buggies and toys that make animal noises when you drop-kick them across the kitchen, etc.

They’re right, of course, one day I may well want a small girlonthenet so I can train her to continue my glorious works. But in the meantime, as I have no kids, I have no opinions to contribute to this conversation about yours. Even if I did have opinions, you probably wouldn’t want me to contribute them.

Usually a conversation consists of one person talking about something and the other chipping in with an opinion or a story of their own. Sadly I have few appropriate child-based stories of my own and lack of experience means my opinions are worthless to you.

I can’t count the number of times I’ve offered a suggestion to a parent on how to deal with the toddler-based problem they have just told me about, only to be greeted with “you wouldn’t understand, you’re not a parent.”

Well no, demonstrably I’m not. And so you talking about your kids is a pretty one-sided conversation. A one-sided conversation that leaves me slightly bored, occasionally belittled and deeply unaroused.

Look – children can be very cute sometimes. They’re a bit like small versions of adults, but more stupid, which means they say funny things and have cute tiny hands and wear outrageous clothes and beg for ice-cream and all that jazz. They have toys that I pretend I don’t want to play with but secretly quite enjoy (train sets and Play-doh: fuck yeah) and they do tend to liven up otherwise tedious family gatherings.

So I don’t hate kids, and if you’re a boy I’m fucking I certainly don’t hate your kids – I just don’t want to be engaged in a long discussion about them. Just as you’re probably deeply disinterested in the minutiae of the strategy meeting that I had today at work, I am not interested in the minutiae of tiny lives you nurture when you’re somewhere far from me.

Your kids are fine – I don’t hate them. On the contrary I wish them health, wealth, happiness, success, and a long life followed by a noble exit. I just wish they’d do it fucking quietly.

Background: A politician has been having a love affair with a young Russian girl, who was accused of shagging him purely so she could find out state secrets. Well, this week the courts ruled that there was no evidence that she was a spy – she just loved him.

Liberal Democrat MP Mike Hancock is a sexy man. Perhaps not to you, but he certainly is to Katia Zatuliveter.

For some reason we are aghast. We are shocked. We, as a nation, have risen as one and cried “WTF” at the sheer implausibility of someone who is young and (let me just get out my arbitrary ‘hotness’ measuring device) sexy falling for a guy who is – shudder – old.
We are so gobsmacked, in fact, that we believed her to be a spy.

She was a young, blonde Russian, for a start, so of course she was a spy. But more than that, she just had to be a spy, because the very idea that she would have been fucking an older man for anything other than money is just utterly grotesque. Awful. Unthinkable.

In his judgement (in which he allowed that Mike’s ladyfriend was, on balance, not a spy) Mr Justice Mitting concluded that “however odd it might seem, she fell for him.”

Odd indeed. Why oh why would a young (bring out the arbitrary measuring stick again!), sexy blonde fall for a beardy old Lib Dem? While you try to hold down the rising feeling of nausea at the idea of intergenerational relationships, I’ll throw out a few ideas:

Older guys are wiser

More years = more time to ingest facts and stories. Listen to an older guy talk and you’ll hear interesting tales and scintillating nuggets that, in turn, will help you to appear wise when you’re older. Just look at the weight of sexy knowledge contained within the brains of old dudes such as Ian Hislop, David Attenborough and Jeremy Clarkson.

Older men have more sexual experience

While they may still only do it in the same range of sexual positions as you’re used to, older guys have more experience and patience in bed. They are definitely more likely to make you come because they’ve had more practise at doing it.

Older guys have the aura of authority figures

Hi, teacher/driving instructor/angry army sergeant at a training camp for filthy female recruits. Older guys are hot because they can tell you off and have you really believing it. They’re a bit like dads, and therefore more likely not only to spank you like you’ve been very naughty, but also buy you ice-cream and help with your homework.

Absolutely none of the above

You know what I love in a guy? An awesome sense of humour, a filthy mind, a liberal outlook, a willingness to tolerate my excessive swearing. I am not generally bothered by his weight, his height, his body hair, or the year that happens to be printed on his driving license.

Maybe Mike Hancock is a great cook. Maybe he’s a brilliant listener. Maybe he’s sensitive, charming, funny and absolutely stunning in bed. Perhaps he makes her gasp for air as he rails her like a man possessed.

Just because we pick out one particular feature of someone (in this case his age) and dwell on it obsessively, that doesn’t necessarily mean that it is the only thing that potential partners will focus on. And just because there is a huge difference in age that doesn’t necessarily mean that this girl has an age fetish.

Forget his age and appearance for just a fraction of a second, and consider that maybe, just maybe, she loves him because he’s great.

When I was at school boys would occasionally, very occasionally, ask me out. Let’s say there were around 10 times this happened. On 8 out of those 10 occasions, they were joking.

Of course we grown-ups can tut and sigh and shake our heads at the cruelty of children, but what’s much better is to recognise what we can learn from it. And like all the best lessons in life, this one could help you get laid. Get your notebooks out, face front and keep your eyes on the fucking blackboard…

Understanding insecurity gives you a way into someone’s pants, because you can push the buttons that make them feel good.

It’s been years since a boy jokingly asked me out, and life’s a bit different now. I’m no longer fat and fourteen and in love with any boy who was willing to put his hand up my skirt during maths lessons, but I’m still a child really. That fourteen year old is just a bit bigger, and is gobsmacked that she has a job, a flat, and the legal right to drink herself insensible whilst livetweeting the Apprentice.

So despite my external grown-up-ness, the memory of these joke-proposals stays with me, as I imagine it stays with any girl who’s ever been shy, covered in acne, or good at science. Now that we’re grown-ups, no matter how hot we’ve become or how confident we are, there’s always a little something that makes us wonder if you’re joking when you ask.

A casual, throwaway, “Fancy a shag?” opens up the mental fight between confidence: “Say yes, say yes, he’s beautiful.” and the insecurity still nurtured by that 14 year old: “He’s joking. Say no. Then run away and cry behind the gym.”

If you ask this question of a lady and you don’t look serious, my money’s on the fact that you’ll probably get a no.

But God, GOD. In the situations where you really want it, and tell me you really want it, it’ll be the hardest thing I ever do to turn you down. There is nothing in this life more attractive than a man who is panting for you. Dripping for you. So desperate to get within 20 feet of you that he’d happily fuck a letterbox if you shouted words of encouragement.

And so, gents. When you’re looking at a lovely lady, and you think she might be out of your league, remember that one day she was probably fat and fourteen. She still wakes up most mornings and winces at her reflection in a mirror. She might worry that she’s got cellulite, or that her tits are slightly uneven, that her hands look old or her eyebrows unplucked or her feet too big for her awkward, stumbling body.

Approaching women is hard, of course. But if you can be the one who strides over with confidence, and says: “You know what? You’re fucking spectacular” then you win. You win so hard your friends will wonder what your secret is. You’ve just made someone’s day, and you could be the one screwing her twelve shades of happy by the time that day is done.

This. Does. Not. Mean. Anything.

Let’s stop using this phrase, yeah? Because what it implies is that one person is better than another purely on the grounds of sexual attractiveness.

I don’t know about you, but I’d find it difficult to rank the entire human race on an objective measure of sexuality. Sure, there’s a fuzzy and generic scale on which we might say that more people want to fuck Anne Hathaway than Anne Widdicombe, but that doesn’t mean that there’s no one who finds Widdicombe’s rotund Tory cuntitude more shag-worthy than Hathaway’s fey charm.

Have you ever passionately lusted after someone and had your friends tell you you’re mad? Because I have. I love guys who are not conventionally attractive – guys who might be a bit shy about their pot-belly but have hands that I can’t look at without imagining filthy things. Guys who are old enough to be my parents but have disgustingly compelling ‘come to bed’ eyes, and an aura of dominance that Brad Pitt will never achieve. There are guys that I want to fuck because they’re funny, because they’re angry, or because they seem like they’d get hard just waiting for me at the bus stop. Boys who’d prompt my friends to stare and my parents to raise surprised eyebrows.

Guys who might generally think I was ‘out of their league’ are frequently the exact ones that I want to bury my fucking face in. Why? Because if they hold me in such high esteem I imagine that there’d be a spectacular erection and enthusiastic sex if I were to take them somewhere private.

I am in no way out of anyone’s league, and damned if I think anyone’s out of mine. The issue in any situation where you’re propositioning someone is simply whether there is mutual attraction. By all means turn someone down because you don’t fancy them, but don’t assuage your guilt by implying that no one else like you would fuck them either.

Some women are genuinely offended to be propositioned by someone who they don’t find attractive. In these cases ‘out of your league’ serves the dual purpose of being a painfully effective brush-off and also a consoling tool for those who place a pathetic mountain of importance on their own appearance.

If I don’t fancy you I won’t shag you – I’ll turn you down as nicely as possible, and perhaps even point you towards a friend who I think might be turned on by your specific charms. But be assured: if you want to fuck me you’re in my league, it’s just that sometimes I don’t want to play.

And to those who actually use the phrase ‘out of your league’ to refer to potential partners, I’d strongly advise that you piss off far out of my earshot. I am liable to step in in situations where someone’s been brave enough to make an approach and has been shot down with the kind of cold-hearted bitchery that’ll take them years to get over. What’s wrong with saying ‘no’? Why do you have to turn it into a weird competition for attractiveness that will destroy the confidence of someone who may already be lacking it in the first place?

If some misguided league system is your reason for not fucking someone then I’m afraid we’re not just in different leagues, but playing different games altogether.

I don’t believe you’re real

You obviously believe I’m real enough to initiate a conversation with, so what is the point of this question? This is one of the most irritating dating site fails.
I’ve written the profile, I can write replies, but short of running round to your house and headbutting you in the crotch, there’s not much else I can do to prove it.

Wanna chat?

Why yes, yes I do. But in real life, please, not on some idiotic chat programme where we have stilted conversations about what we’re both doing, culminating in me being massively turned off by your excessive use of the term ‘lol.’

I always say in my profile that I hate IM. If you then insist on IMing me I’ll assume not only that you’re typing one-handed, but also that all that ‘one-handed typing’ has made you so blind you can’t read.

I expect you won’t reply…

Why, do I look like an arsehole?

In all seriousness I get a fair few messages, mainly because I mention sex on my profile and men these days have reasonably low standards. But I don’t get so many that it’d be impossible to reply to all of them – I reply to about one in five – the ones that don’t break these rules.

Wow your so hot

If you can’t spot what’s wrong with this then I wouldn’t reply to you either.

Do you have a pic of your body?

Or, to say what you actually mean: “are you fat?”

That’s what you’re asking, so why not come out and say it? Well, because it’s fucking rude, obviously.

I’m not going to tell you whether or not I’m fat, just as I’m not going to suck my stomach in and stand in front of a mirror just so I can send a picture of my body to someone so shallow I’d definitely not fuck him in the first place.